"It
is written of the magical pyramid that no one who has seen it has ever
returned alive."

A question, Make it three questions:

1. Who wrote that, and what is his
accuracy rate? Maybe he was the same guy who thought Chocolat would
win Best Picture last year.

2. How did they know this? Did they
interview every live person to ask them if they had ever gone to the
magic pyramid? That would take a long time. Maybe they just used
sampling techniques, like Gallup, in which case it would be zero with
an error tolerance of plus or minus four percent. So it is possible
that as many as four percent of all living people have seen it and
returned alive, or about 240 million people, roughly the entire
population of the United States. Not counting those who saw it in the
movie.

3. If no live person has ever seen
it, what makes them think it exists? What makes the guy who wrote it
think it exists?

"You have
started a chain reaction that could bring about the next
apocalypse"

This reminds me of what the French
people tell King Arthur, when they are asked to join his quest for the
Grail: "The Holy Grail? We already have one? It's-a very
nice". Similarly, the Darrow character asked the William Jennings
Bryan character in Inherit the Wind, when he took the witness stand as
an expert on the bible, "So what about Cain's wife? Where did she
come from? Was there another creation in the next county?"

I've always thought that apocalypses,
like creations and Holy Grails, were pretty much maxed out at a
quantity of one. You mean to say I missed the first apocalypse? I have
to get on some better mailing lists. I guess it really wasn't that good of an
apocalypse, given that I am here writing these words.

For now.

Maybe it was just a time-delayed
apocalypse.

Mua-ha-ha-ha.

NUDITY REPORT

none. Some
skimpy costumes for Rachel Weisz and Patricia Velasquez

The alleged plot: a bunch of evil
guys raise Mr Mummy to help them fight an even more evil guy and steal
his army. I think. Or maybe they were just having a contest to see who
was really the most evil guy of all. Given that one of the top evil
contenders was The Rock, I think they should have taken a page from
the book of the WWF, and avoided having bad guys fight each other.

And then a little kid gets something
stuck on his arm which gives him a visual tour of Egypt. I think it
was a View-Master projector.

Then that Deuce Bigelow guy led his
horsemen against an army of evil 8-foot dog soldiers battling for the
god Anubis. Apparently the Anubmeister isn't a very powerful God,
because the humans defeated about 100,000 of those soldiers without a
single casualty. The humans didn't even seem to have any wounded,
although they were breathing kinda heavy. The dog soldiers must have
been the reincarnation of the British soldiers that fought against Ol'
Hickory at the battle of New Orleans, although even that famous
slaughter had eight American casualties. (The British commander lost
his own life, plus 700 men killed, 1400 wounded, 500 captured.)

To be honest, I like Brendan
Frazier's combination of hunkiness and dorkiness, and I enjoyed the
humor in the film, but without the quips it's really just a grade-z
Mummy film, with a plot just as bad or worse than in those old movies,
except with better production values. The serious dialogue must have
been written by fourth graders, as evidenced by the examples above.
Without the humor, I would have hated it. A lot of critics bash
mass-market films, but I'm such an unabashed movie-lover that I
generally don't have any trouble watching a summer blockbuster. But my
attention drifted off quite a bit during this one.

The DVD is pretty much a
shamelessly commercial product. Although it does deign to include the
movie, as promised, it also includes three promos for the next sequel,
The Scorpion King, and another ad for the Universal Studios theme
parks.

... and probably some promotions for
Ace Bandages. "My brand", says Im-Ho-Tep, "wrap me in
Ace, or wrap me in nothing at all"

The
Critics Vote

General consensus: between two and two
and a half stars. Ebert 2/4, Berardinelli 2.5/4,
Apollo 63/100.

With their
dollars ... it did a blockbuster-level $201 million in
the USA, was also a major overseas hit. It was made for
$95 million dollars.

IMDb
guideline: 7.5 usually indicates a level of
excellence, about like three and a half stars
from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm
watchability, about like two and a half stars
from the critics. The fives are generally not
worthwhile unless they are really your kind of
material, about like two stars from the critics.
Films under five are generally awful even if you
like that kind of film, equivalent to about one
and a half stars from the critics or less,
depending on just how far below five the rating
is.

My own
guideline: A means the movie is so good it
will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not
good enough to win you over if you hate the
genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an
open mind about this type of film. C means it will only
appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover
appeal. D means you'll hate it even if you
like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if
you love the genre. F means that the film is not only
unappealing across-the-board, but technically
inept as well.

Based on this
description, I'd say it's a C. A so-so action/adventure film.
Ludicrous plot and dialogue are somewhat redeemed by
humor.